Chapter 75: The Book of Tyrkanzyaka - Old Testament (Part 2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 75: The Book of Tyrkanzyaka - Old Testament (Part 2)
The girl and her father faced a predicament.
Death, as weighty as it was, came rarely, and deaths that left the body intact were rarer still. Victims of beast attacks or drowning left no corpse behind.
The only deaths that left a corpse were from illness, but that presented its own problem. Ever since the villagers began seeking out her father for even the most trivial wounds and sicknesses, common illnesses were rarely fatal.
Even when someone did die from a severe disease, it made no difference. While followers of the Order of Gaia preferred burial, the poor who couldn't afford it accepted the cremation promoted by the Holy Church. Her father could only bite his lip as the bodies burned to ash.
He couldn't dissect a body that had been reduced to ash, yet he couldn't neglect his duties and let people die. It was simply impossible to acquire a corpse in the vicinity.
Eventually, growing desperate, her father decided to take a risk.
“Tyr, I'm going a little farther out today.”
A twisted obsession now consumed him, and it seemed he wouldn't stop until he understood everything there was to know about the human body.
The girl felt a vague anxiety, but it was nothing more than a fleeting worry. After all, she had already surpassed her father and become an excellent healer in her own right.
“I'll help you.”
“No. It's a long and dangerous road.”
“It's okay. I like walking at night. And you know, right? I never get out of breath, no matter how much I walk.”
“It's a long journey over two mountain passes. Taking you with me would only draw more attention. Stay and watch the house today.”
Her father's will was firm and reasonable. The girl quickly agreed. But her dissatisfied expression must have been obvious, because her father, while grabbing his coat, smiled kindly and said.
“Instead, could you wrap Ralion's hooves in cloth? It's a long way, so I'll need the mule to pull the cart today…”
It was a dark night.
So the villagers wouldn't see him leave, her father departed long after dusk. The girl saw him off from her perch atop the largest rock in the village, and there she waited for his return.
Stars twinkled across the sky. The moon set at a pace slow enough to make one yawn. Watching the waning moon and glittering stars, the girl was lost in thought.
Her father wasn't wrong.
Cruel disease, heartless death. If not for them, her mother would still be alive. And her father would be happy, not trapped in this obsession.
So it wasn't her father who was wrong. The truly wicked thing was the cruel disease that had made him this way…
'I'm sorry, Tyr.'
The sound of a gust of wind woke her. She must have dozed off. Dawn was breaking in the distance, and birds chirped from the trees.
The girl hastily sat up and looked around.
The night had passed, but her father hadn't returned? If he'd seen her, he would have woken her.
No, perhaps he was too exhausted to even notice…
After staring down the path a while longer, she decided to head home. If her father wasn't there, she could always come back.
As she walked up the path toward the small cabin she shared with her father, an ominous feeling washed over her.
A large horse was tied up near the house. It was a magnificent steed, twice the size of Ralion, with a beautiful mane. Its white saddle, clearly expensive, bore the insignia of the Holy Church: a cross…
The moment she recognized it, the girl burst into the house.
A bad premonition is never wrong.
The moment she opened the door, the coppery stench of blood hit her. The cabin was small, allowing her to take in the entire scene at a glance.
Three intruders in cold steel armor.
The blood dripping from the blade one of them held.
And beneath it, her father, collapsed in a pool of his own blood.
“Father!”
The girl, her face deathly pale, collapsed beside him. For a moment, focus returned to her dying father's eyes.
The relief in them quickly turned to wide-eyed shock and terror.
“Tyr… Run…”
“No! Father!”
His voice was faint, on the verge of giving out. But with his last breath, he summoned all his strength, forcing the words out with a bloody froth.
“You have… to… live… My… hope…”
“Father!”
It was a grievous wound. One didn't need to be a healer to see it was fatal.
Can I do this? She didn't know. She had never used this much power on someone who was still alive.
But she had to succeed. If she didn't, her father would die. Closing her eyes, the girl began to exert her dominion over the gushing blood.
“Priest. What of the girl?”
“Leave her. We are punishers, not murderers. We have what we came for…”
The muttering priest trailed off.
The blood was moving, following the girl's fingers. The blood that had gushed from her father's chest was returning to its rightful place under her guidance, surging through the empty air.
Spilled water cannot be put back in its cup, but this blood could. The girl desperately willed her father's blood to return.
“…Priest. What is she doing?”
Hush. The priest raised a hand, and a heavy silence fell over them.
In a voice as weighty as the sky itself, the priest addressed the girl.
“Little one. What is your name?”
The voice from behind snapped the girl back to reality. These men had come to punish her father. They wouldn't just let her continue.
But if she stopped, her father would die. She couldn't let that happen. Continuing her Bloodcraft, she pleaded desperately.
“I-It's Tyr. I'm sorry. We won't do it again, I promise. Please, just save my father…”
“Tyr. Yes, Tyr. A fine name. Did your father give it to you?”
“Yes, yes. My father is a good person. He's helped so many people. I'll make sure he stops, I promise…”
It was the plea of a deeply devoted daughter. Had the men before her possessed even a shred of mercy, they might have turned and left.
But she was facing a priest, and mercy cannot penetrate armor forged from faith and duty.
“I cannot save your father. However.”
Shunk.
Without warning, the priest's sword plunged into the girl's chest.
A stunned gasp escaped her lips. The sensation of cold metal tearing through flesh, the blade twisting against her frantic heart.
Excruciating pain followed an instant later. Spitting up a bloody froth from her pierced lung, Tyr collapsed onto the wooden floor.
The world blurred. Pain was the only thing left. Her consciousness began to sink.
And here, her memories faded.
The priest's voice drifted over her collapsed form.
“I will send you to the same place as your father.”
He flicked his blade clean, splattering an arc of blood across the wooden floor.
That was her last memory of being alive.
“I must repent. Unnecessary compassion nearly led me to fail in my duty.”
“Do we purify it? Shall I bring a torch?”
“No. We must leave a warning. Unearth the bodies beneath the building and let us be on our way.”
“Yes, Priest.”
“That was close. To think the seed of the Divine was in a place like this…”
“Teacher, my arm feels stiff today… Aaaah!”
“Murder! It's murder! The teacher is dead! Tyr, too!”
“Huh? A… corpse?”
“Wait, this is the old woman who died last month…”
“Over here! There are more bodies…!”
“Don't tell me all those graves that were dug up recently… it was the teacher—no, this devil…”
“A devil…”
“He received divine punishment…”
“This is ominous. Don't let anyone near…”
“…”
“Tsk, tsk. Though he committed the great sin of desecrating the graves of the dead, is it not a pity that their bodies and their sins, which all came from the earth, cannot return to it? As a servant of Mother Earth, I cannot simply leave them here to be cursed.”
“The father and daughter face each other even in death. They must have been a kind family to one another. Sigh, it's been a while, but I suppose I'll conduct a funeral.”
“Alright. They're all buried. Phew. It's tiring, using my strength after so long.”
“May you find peace in the arms of Mother Earth.”
However.
The priest who pierced her heart,
the villagers who abandoned them,
and the graveman who buried her alongside her father.
None of them realized a crucial fact.
That the girl, despite the wound in her heart, was not yet dead.
It was a time of endurance. Without knowing why she had to live, the girl desperately clung to life within her grave. She watched her father's body decay before her very eyes, yet she refused to let go.
Was it because of her father's last words? Or was it merely primal instinct?
She held fast to the blood that sought to leave her body, tenaciously pushing back the approach of death.
'It's dark…'
Of course it was dark. She was lying in a coffin next to her father, buried beneath the earth. It had been this way until now, and it would be this way forever.
If that was so, what need was there for color? For the pigments created to block out light?
Useless. Erase all color.
'Hun… gry.'
The only thing to eat was her father before her…
A chill ran down her spine. Eat? Her father's corpse? She couldn't. And yet, the hunger that demanded patricide and cannibalism was cruel.
It would be far better not to feel hunger at all.
'Thirs… ty.'
If there is no hunger, is saliva necessary? If there is nothing to lose, are tears necessary?
All of it is useless. Discard it.
'It hurts…'
Why must she feel pain? If what some old philosopher said was true, wasn't pain proof of being alive? If so, then for a girl who had already lost her life, pain was meaningless.
The pain that pursued and tormented her to the very end was cruel. It had to be discarded.
Color is useless. Erase it.
Desire is useless. Sever it.
Tears are useless. Empty them.
Pain is useless. Scrape it away.
And so, the girl endured the long years of suffering, lying beside her own blood and the traces of life flowing from her father's body.
During that time, her Bloodcraft reached its apex.
All activities for survival ceased; only blood moved to sustain her body. The girl who once tenaciously managed her household became a merciless tax collector, with her own body as the subject.
And so, the girl who discarded everything unnecessary and slowly came to dominate every single blood vessel to her fingertips and toes,
who gradually expanded her range, taking control of all the blood scattered upon the earth,
at one point, opened the lid of her coffin and emerged into the world.
“Ah.”
A dry murmur escaped her lips. She thought she'd forgotten how to speak after so long, but it seemed language remained even after she had discarded everything else.
The world around her was dark, but her eyes were accustomed to it—a result of an eternity spent in blackness.
When the girl awoke, much had changed.
The village.
The world.
The people.
The only thing unchanged was the girl herself…
No, perhaps she was the one who had changed the most.
She had discarded so much, yet one thing remained: a cold, burning, refined rage. It was an emotion she had been unable to forget over the eons, thanks to the constant image of her father's corpse.
The girl commanded her blood, forcing her body to walk. Her steps were awkward, like a puppet on strings, but she quickly grew used to them.
Walking a path with no destination, only a purpose, she contemplated her new calling.
She would take from the Apostles of the Sky God everything that they had taken from her.
-And that is her tale.
The girl gathered all she had cast away and forged it anew. The memories of her suffering—so ancient and agonizing they had to be forgotten. She took the eons spent facing her father's corpse, shedding parts of herself one by one, and sealed them into a single card.
Magic is the manifestation of one's world. The girl created a memento, remembering the self that had disappeared 1200 years ago.
On the white card, a red heart glowed like fresh blood.
The girl plunged the red card into her own chest. Infinitely painful, yet tenderly.
And with a faint smile, she vanished.